Angkor Wat and authentic experiences on your trip to Cambodia is written by Camilla Kornerup
The experiences are endless when you travel to Cambodia
I sit and look down at my three blue toenails. The one on the little toe is about to fall off, but the other two I think I will most graciously be allowed to keep, even though they now look like something that should be amputated.
My hiking boots stink of mold, and I still have marks from leech bites, beach fleas, and mosquitoes. It's all just proof that I've just returned from Southeast Asia, specifically Cambodia, which – as I quickly found out – has more to offer than Angkor Wat.
From Phnom Penh to the remains of the French colonial era
It all began just over a month ago in the north-eastern part of Cambodia up towards the border with Vietnam. I had sought refuge in the remote province of Ratanakiri after a few hectic days in Phnom Penh, where I quickly had enough of noisy transport, rubbish in the streets and alleys, intense heat and bad air.
Instead, I chose to head north to rural idyll and stayed in a tastefully restored old French governor's residence in the small town of Banlung. The city is close to the area's national parks and forms the starting point for hikes into the heart of the rainforest. This is where my journey to Angkor Wat started.
Lonely woman in her late 40s looking for travel companions in Cambodia
I decided to explore the jungle before continuing my journey towards Angkor Wat. You need a permit and a guide to trek in Virachey National Park. I got both at the park HQ, which is located on the outskirts of Banlung, a nice short bike ride from the hotel.
At the office they looked at me a little while I asked if there were anyone else going on a trip one of the days that I could go with. There wasn't. They had just left, and since it was the rainy season and the financial crisis at the same time, they were getting very few bookings at the moment.
I had just endured a day and a half in local buses on dirt roads in Cambodia with peanut-munching children on my lap and watching endlessly bad music videos on the buses' outdated TVs, the sound level of which was still increasing in strength. In other words, I was not ready to turn around. It only took me a split second to decide to leave alone, even though I had probably imagined trekking with others back home.
"Do you know the jungle, mam?", The man asked me a little cautiously in the office. The question made me dribble back in memory of previous trips down rivers in Amazon and up slippery slopes in search of orangutans in Borneo's rainforest; joo, I really meant enough, I knew a little about the jungle, although I was very happy to get a guide with.
To fight the leeches in Cambodia's rainy season
When traveling to Cambodia, you can't avoid being chased by bloodsucking animals on a jungle trek. During the dry season, mosquitoes attack relentlessly, while leeches take over during the rainy season. I didn't know the latter animals personally before leaving.
My sweet and thoughtful guide therefore equipped me with “leech socks”: a kind of thick, long canvas bag shaped like a stocking, like the ones children get presents in at Christmas. “They protect against the worst,” he announced, before I, somewhat reassured, threw myself onto the back of his motorbike, and we headed for the national park before heading to Angkor Wat.
Wearing knee-high socks and a backpack with a hammock, clothes, three days' worth of provisions, a wok and the indispensable toothbrush, we quietly sailed up the river towards the place where we would start walking. The first night we would spend in a village with one of the area's many ethnic minorities, the Brao people. They offer the park's few tourists an overnight stay in exchange for a small contribution to the household.
The ethnic minorities live scattered in the jungle that stretches from Cambodia into Vietnam and the south Laos . Most often they clear a piece of forest and some families live together in wooden houses on stilts, far from civilization.
In this village, the men grew cashew nuts and raised water buffalo, while the women raised chickens, pigs and huge flocks of children. They start having children as young as 14-15, so they can produce a good portion of offspring, including a certain percentage of children who die as infants due to diseases and poor hygiene.
Visiting the Brao people
The stay in the village was quite pleasant, and all communication took place in sign language, as the locals do not speak Khmer, as my guide and the majority of the rest of the Cambodian population do.
I therefore also decided to ignore the language and chose to walk around among the houses and let myself be served by my guide and his tasty wok food. He had cunningly prepared it over a fire, to the great interest of the children, who swarmed around us, but were far too shy to come closer.
The next morning we were joined by a young man from the village who joined the trip as an extra guide as we had a lot to carry. We sailed another bit to the hiking trail and started our trek early the next morning while the sun was still low.
When you travel to Cambodia, you experience that the water level rises considerably during the rainy season, so that what are streams in the dry season become rivers. When we crossed the rivers, we walked in water up to our necks and held our luggage on our heads. As a result, we were soaked the whole time.
With high humidity and the scorching sun, it didn't matter much. Even though the boots were heavy, they were nice to have, because the leeches jumped happily and bit themselves everywhere on the boots and leech socks. We had some poison that we smeared on the ones that came closest, but it was impossible to keep all the beasts off my body. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I was picking off about 50 leeches a day - I'll just have to get used to that!
In the footsteps of the Vietnam War before the trip continues to Angkor Wat
The rainforest in Northern Cambodia is dense and the paths are narrow and greasy during the rainy season. We made our way through thickets and bamboo with our hands out in front of us, straddled over fallen logs, slipped in mud and jumped over streams. It was cool, but wildly exciting to find our way, and often we couldn't see more than a few meters ahead.
Once we set up camp and ate noodles, however, it wasn't long before we collapsed into our hammocks from sheer exhaustion and slept until the gibbon's screams woke us up early the next morning.
We walked along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which runs into northern Cambodia. In several places, there were weapons left behind, which the soldiers from the Vietnam War had thrown away. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to be an American soldier on these edges in the 70s.
The climate, the leeches and the mosquitoes alone make a white person react violently. They were even here for months and then at war with local forces. It must have been indescribably exhausting to crawl around in this damp climate and be on guard all the time without being able to orient themselves properly. I understand even better now why so many soldiers returned home completely mentally destroyed.
Finally in Cambodia's civilization again and the meeting with Angkor Wat
On the last day, I slowly started to feel my strength slipping away. It's no big deal to walk for three days, but in those conditions, three felt like ten. As the number of blisters increased, I began to look forward to seeing the end of the trip.
Arriving back at the river from which we were to sail home, I threw away my boots and leech socks, and sure enough a little leech wasn't sitting and eating from my open wound on my heel - then I showed that it was time for a change of scene.
Back at the hotel a few hours later it was time to throw all my clothes in the wash, slip into my swimsuit and fall into a sun lounger overlooking the soft water of the pool. The evenings at the hotel were indescribable, where the chefs merged Khmer with French in a beautiful symphony, and gradually I came to my senses, packed up and set off for the next destination – Angkor Wat.
It took three days before I got “temple sickness” at Angkor Wat.
I was picked up already at half past seven in the morning by my tuktuk driver and guide. The trip from Siem Reap out to Angkor Wat is quite short, and suddenly you are standing there - in front of the world's largest religious monument and staring intently at the characteristic five towers, which are reflected in a small lake with lotuses.
It was super interesting to travel back a thousand years and try to understand how a million inhabitants turned this area into a vibrant metropolis the size of modern day New York and thus the world's largest at its time.
Well-functioning infrastructure, water supply, palaces, an endless number of temples and enormous moats around the most important ones, together with inscriptions, reliefs and statues, tell of a fantastically intelligent people. Only physics sets limits to how much you can bear to wander around and see when you travel to Cambodia, because there is always more. It IS truly a lot to experience, and I am glad I took three days to do it.
By bike along the rice fields in Cambodia
One of the things I love most about traveling is getting a glimpse into the everyday lives of a people. When you travel to Cambodia, you get that when you rent a bike and ride out to fishing villages, continue along rice fields and stop in small villages where people are not used to seeing tourists.
All this I did outside the city of Kampot, which is situated on a river in the southern part of the country not far from the coast. On trips to Cambodia you also see the local bicycles, as they have no other means of transport; the children wheel off in their blue and white school uniforms, while women and men carry goods and merchandise to and from nearby markets.
I was lucky enough to be there just as the rainy season set in, as this is the time when farmers sow rice in the soggy fields that water buffaloes have just trampled smooth. The landscape is transformed into various shades of light green at this time, and since Cambodia is mostly flat, one green 'rice carpet' follows another as far as the eye can see.
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Laziness long live
A round trip in Cambodia can advantageously end with sand between your toes and your nose in the cloud on one of the islands off the seaside resort of Sihanoukville. I spent four days on the largely deserted Koh Rong Samloem, lured there by the idea of a primitive bungalow on the beach and the welcoming name of Lazy Beach where you live.
It's a two-hour sail out there, and during the rainy season the boat cannot dock at the bridge, so you swim ashore and get your things into a waterproof container.
There were virtually no other guests, so pure relaxation was in order. My heart rate dropped as the days passed and slowly settled into a uniformity and disappeared into the horizon. I moved in a lazy triangle between the beach, the restaurant and the bungalow until I had finished reading my crime novel and the plane ticket reminded me that I had to break up. Then I packed my rucksack, knocked the sand off my sandals and traveled into Phnom Penh, from where I headed home.
Have a good trip to Angkor Wat and the rest of Cambodia!
This is what you should see on your trip to Cambodia and Angkor Wat
- Angkor Wat
- Virachey National Park
- Phnom Penh,
- Bayon
- Chau Say Tevoda
- Mekong river
Did you know: Here are the top 7 best nature destinations in Asia according to Booking.com's millions of users
7: Pai in northern Thailand
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